With truckers and road transport businesses going through a series of disruptions and financial turmoil since the lockdown announced to tackle the pandemic, All India Transport Welfare Association (AITWA) has issued a serious of advisories to its members to safeguard their businesses and trade in general.
Noting that a majority of 90 lakh-plus trucks operating across the country are lying idle for over the past two month owing to lockdown, the truckers association feels that the operators are facing direct losses out of road tax, insurance, permit fees and so on, despite not plying them on road. The association has also expressed its displeasure on government of India for not announcing any stimulus measures aimed at the transport sector.
With demand contracting owing to drop in production, exports and trade, the industry body is worried about excess available capacity of trucking in the market once normalcy in lockdown measures is realised. To avert this scenario, AITWA has asked its members to consciously stay away from buying new trucks in this year 2020-21. Stalling fresh supply of new trucks into the market will help the industry in utilizing its existing capacity. The mantra for self-reliance – #NoTrucksForMe – is the need of the hour, it claims.
Further, in a significant advisory on inability to raise invoices and cash-flow issues, mainly due to the unavailability of the standard physical copy of Proof of Delivery (POD), it has asked the customer of its trucking members to accept e-invoice along with scanned copy of electronic-POD and release the due payments against the e-invoices.
Even if companies are unable to clear full payments, it has appealed them to clear at least 80-90 percent of the invoice based on these documents, so that transporters can continue their operations without any financial hiccups. With this advisory, AITWA is hoping to make changes which will benefit supply chains in years to come.